mick laBriola

Donald “Duck” Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and as a session bassist for Stax Records. At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records, including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley and many others. In 1992, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T. & the M.G.’s. He is ranked number 40 on Bass Player magazine’s list of “The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time”.

Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father nicknamed him “Duck” while watching Disney cartoons with him one day. Dunn grew up playing sports and riding his bike with another future professional musician, Steve Cropper.

Theodore Shaw Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Described by critic Scott Yanow as “the definitive swing pianist”,Wilson had a sophisticated, elegant style. His work was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. With Goodman, he was one of the first black musicians to appear prominently with white musicians. In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Wilson also led his own groups and recording sessions from the late 1920s to the 1980s.

Wilson was born in Austin, Texas. He studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. After working in Speed Webb‘s band, with Louis Armstrong, and also understudying Earl Hines in Hines’s Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra, Wilson joined Benny Carter‘s Chocolate Dandies in 1933. In 1935, he joined the Benny Goodman Trio (which consisted of Goodman, Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, later expanded to the Benny Goodman Quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton). The trio performed during the big band‘s intermissions. By joining the trio, Wilson became one of the first black musicians to perform prominently in a racially integrated group.

Wild Bill Davis (November 24, 1918 – August 17, 1995) was the stage name of American jazz pianist, organist, and arranger William Strethen Davis. He is best known for his pioneering jazz electric organ recordings and for his tenure with the Tympany Five, the backing group for Louis Jordan. Prior to the emergence of Jimmy Smith in 1956, Davis (whom Smith had reportedly first seen playing organ in the 1930s) was the pacesetter among organists.

Davis was born in Glasgow, Missouri and grew up in Parsons, Kansas. He first learned music from his father who was a professional singer. He received further musical training at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, and at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. In his early career he took inspiration from Fats Waller and Art Tatum.

Scott Joplin (c. 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, he was dubbed the “King of Ragtime.” During his career, he wrote over 40 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the Maple Leaf Rag, became the genre’s first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the archetypal rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music and largely disdained the practice of ragtime such as that in honky tonk.

Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, developing his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, he formed a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s, he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World’s Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.

ruce Randall Hornsby (born November 23, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. His music draws from folk rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Southern rock, country rock, jam band, rock, heartland rock, and blues rock musical traditions.

Hornsby has won three Grammy Awards, including a 1987 Grammy Award for Best New Artist with Bruce Hornsby and the Range, a 1990 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, and a 1994 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Hornsby has worked with his touring band Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers, his bluegrass project with Ricky Skaggs, and as a session and guest musician. He was a touring member of the Grateful Dead from September 1990 through March 1992, playing over 100 shows with the Grateful Dead. His 23rd album, ‘Flicted, was released in May 2022.

Bruce Randall Hornsby was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, son of Robert Stanley Hornsby (1920–1998), an attorney, real-estate developer and former musician, and Lois (née Saunier), a piano player and church community liaison who had a local middle school named after her. He has two siblings, Robert Saunier “Bobby” Hornsby, a realtor with Hornsby Realty and locally known musician, and John Hornsby, an engineer with whom he has collaborated in songwriting.

Ray Drummond (born November 23, 1946 in Brookline, Massachusetts) is an American jazz bassist and teacher. He also has an MBA from Stanford University, hence his linkage to the Stanford Jazz Workshop. He can be heard on hundreds of albums and co-leads The Drummonds with Renee Rosnes and (not related) Billy Drummond.

Drummond has been a resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, since 1980 with his wife, Susan, and his daughter, Maya.

He is the elder brother of David Drummond, who served as senior vice president, corporate development and chief legal officer of Google Inc., until his retirement in 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be2vHcWF0rg

John Alfred Mandel (November 23, 1925 – June 29, 2020) was an American composer and arranger of popular songs, film music and jazz. The musicians he worked with include Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Diane Schuur and Shirley Horn. He won five Grammy Awards – from 17 nominations; his first nomination was for his debut film score for the multi-nominated 1958 film I Want to Live!  Mandel was born in the borough of Manhattan in New York City on November 23, 1925.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu, 23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain’s most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He has a claim to being Spain’s greatest composer of the 20th century, although the number of pieces he composed was relatively modest.

Falla was born Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. He was the son of José María Falla, a Valencian, and María Jesús Matheu, from Catalonia. In 1889 he continued his piano lessons with Alejandro Odero and learned the techniques of harmony and counterpoint from Enrique Broca. At age 15 he became interested in literature and journalism and founded the literary magazines El Burlón and El Cascabel.

HAVANA (AP) — Pablo Milanés, the Latin Grammy-winning balladeer who helped found Cuba’s “nueva trova” movement and toured the world as a cultural ambassador for Fidel Castro’s revolution, has died in Spain, where he had been under treatment for blood cancer. He was 79.

One of the most internationally famous Cuban singer-songwriters, he recorded dozens of albums and hits like “Yolanda,” “Yo Me Quedo” (I’m Staying) and “Amo Esta Isla” (I Love This Island) during a career that lasted more than five decades.

“The culture in Cuba is in mourning for the death of Pablo Milanes,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz tweeted Monday night.

Milanés’ representatives issued a statement saying he had died early Tuesday in Madrid.

Pablo Milanés Arias (24 February 1943 – 22 November 2022) was a Cuban guitar player and singer. He was one of the founders of the Cuban nueva trova, along with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola. His music, originating in the Trova, Son and other traditional styles of early 20th Century Cuban music, set him apart from the style of Silvio Rodríguez.

Pablo Milanés, widely known as Pablito, moved with his family from Bayamo to Havana in 1950. He studied in the Conservatorio Municipal de La Habana, at the time the most prestigious musical school in the country. His first public performance was in 1956. By age 15, he was active in “bohemian” musical circles in Havana, associated with the so-called “filin” musicians.

Max Romeo (born Maxwell Livingston Smith; 22 November 1944)  is a Jamaican reggae and roots reggae recording musician who has achieved chart success in his home country and in the United Kingdom. He had several hits with the vocal group the Emotions. His song “Wet Dream” (1968) included overtly sexual lyrics and launched a new style of reggae.

Born in St. D’Acre, St. Ann, Jamaica, Romeo left home at the age of 14 and worked on a sugar plantation outside Clarendon, before winning a local talent competition when he was 18. This prompted a move to the capital, Kingston, in order to embark on a musical career.

Perry Miller (born November 22, 1941), known professionally as Jesse Colin Young, is an American singer and songwriter. He was a founding member and lead singer of the 1960s group the Youngbloods. After their dissolution in 1972, Young embarked on a solo career, releasing a series of successful albums through Warner Bros. Records, including Song for Juli (1973), Light Shine (1974), Songbird (1975) and the live album On the Road (1976). Young continued to release music in the 1980s with Elektra Records and Cypress Records, before deciding to release music through his personal label, Ridgetop Music, in 1993. After the Mount Vision Fire in 1995, Young relocated with his family to a coffee plantation in Hawaii, periodically releasing music. Young received a diagnosis of “chronic Lyme disease” in 2012, and decided to retire from music. He began performing again in 2016 with his son Tristan, releasing a new album Dreamers in 2019 through BMG.

Young’s song “Sunlight” was covered by Three Dog Night on their album Naturally (1970), and “Darkness, Darkness” by Robert Plant in 2002, which received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

Perry Miller was born and raised in Queens, New York, to musical parents both originally from Lynn, Massachusetts. His mother was a violinist and singer with perfect pitch, while his father was a Harvard educated accountant. Both of his parents had a passion for classical music, and encouraged Young to play, and he learned piano from a young age. In 1959, Young won a scholarship to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he studied classical guitar; however, he was expelled from the strict academy.